The Darkened Corner by Tom Hamilton, Philistine Press 2010
Asked to imagine what a Traveller’s memoirs would be like, some, despite themselves, would conjure up something picaresque, involving a horse-drawn painted wagon and much colourful bandana wearing. Far more likely, however, the reader would think of trailer parks, scrap wagons and dodgy guys resurfacing some sap’s driveway at an incredible speed using half the asphalt at twice the cost.
Fortunately for Mr Hamilton, his life falls within the latter category. If he’d been brought up in a painted caravan, sporting a big gold earring and playing the violin while raven-haired beauties danced passionately beside an open fire, his memoirs may have turned out impossibly purple.
Mr Hamilton’s style is poetic – in the good sense of the word. It requires considerable talent to write this well and he is at his best evoking an unappetising and unromantic world. In the second chapter, for instance, he describes an old, and wealthy lady’s sitting room in remarkable and surreal detail (the ceiling is full of mermaids). But we haven't left a harsh reality far behind. He is nine at the time, in the company of his father who has just sold the lady a massively overpriced lightening rod. In the next scene, in the family pickup and parked outside the bank where he has just cashed the old lady's cheque, his father hits his son’s head so hard it bounces off the dashboard. The reader, having been told that Hamilton's father was in a good mood at the time will draw their own conclusion about what the author’s family life must have been like.
From the age of twelve onwards, the hero of this tale is infatuated by Katie Rose, a girl of surpassing beauty just a couple of years older than himself. She ends up marrying an unlovely distant cousin of Hamilton’s.
But things have already gone downhill. He has rapidly matured into a drunk, full of self loathing and too craven even to commit suicide properly. This self loathing, however, does not extend to the nature of his career – which involves wildly overcharging old ladies for resurfacing jobs. There are some surreal scenes that Hamilton pulls off really well, apart from when he records at length one old lady’s rambling story about giving birth to a monster. If that is the story she actually told him, she should have got a job writing Stephen King’s novels on his days off.
Actually, Mr Hamilton does rather well in his career, making sufficinet money to go and live anywhere and do anything in the greatest nation in the world. And yet, as Randy Newman says at the top, ‘I ought to be happy, but I’m not.’ It’s no good, he’s addicted to sadness – which is the title of chapter 5.
Ostensibly, the source of all his sadness is his unrequited love for Katie Rose. But even when he gets the opportunity to court her, and even though she likes his poetry, he prefers a self-destructive trip to a strip joint. A very good venue, it transpires, in which to wallow in sweet melancholy.
Analysing his motives, he comes to the conclusion that he wants to keep Katie Rose as an ideal. That is to say, as a source of inspiration for his poems. This is a more desirable option, although painful, than simply living with one’s beloved. Didn’t Baudelaire make a similar sacrifice?
Or could it be Katie Rose is wholly a metaphor? From what I know of poets, a far more bountiful spring of misery for Mr Hamilton than mere unrequited love would be the struggle to write something half decent. And that’s even before he starts trying to gain some recognition. Surely a long, hard, tortuous road, even for an Irish Traveller.
Highly recommended.
Saturday, 29 January 2011
Sunday, 23 January 2011
The Netherworld of Work
Some years ago after I’d left college and was looking for a job, I got a tip off from Mr Bector, my landlord. They were taking on packers at the place where he worked – a gas fire factory. I leapt into action, first calling to make an appointment and then dumbing down my CV, which I wrote out by hand. At the factory (a fuscous, echoing, cavernous place, where woeful souls manned a relentless production line) I was shown into a room where an elderly man slouched in a chair like he’d never be able to get out of it. Before he spoke, he stared at me for a few seconds with yellowish, protuberant eyes. It was then, of course, that he made his decision. Still, out of courtesy, he asked me a few brief questions, but we both knew we were wasting each other’s time. Naturally, his judgement was spot on. I wouldn’t have lasted the first shift. And even if I’d been able to stick the job, I’d have drifted off after a few months.
Others have been more successful in getting a job for which they were both overqualified and unsuitable for. The motive is usually some form of financial desperation, though not having an idea of what else to do with one’s life is also a spur. Actually, it has always been a quite common story. However, because of the economic downturn, and the ease of self publishing, there is the possibility that we are going to see the emergence of a new genre – the micro David Copperfield, in which a young person with aspirations and a sense of self worth, not to mention brains, spends a few months suffering monotony and numerous insults to their cultural sensibilities and then, does something else instead. Probably with computers.
A McMemoir with Fries by Linda Sacco at Smashwords 2010 details what must be close to a universal experience. Reading it felt familiar, even though I’ve never worked at MacDonald’s myself. Ms. Sacco was almost seventeen when she was interviewed, ‘outside in the wind’ and gets the job because she’s willing to work an unpopular shift. The ‘folio of achievements’ she brings along is not required.
Ms. Sacco evokes the utterly impersonal nature of the mega employer with a description of 'The Crew Room'. This is 'a tiny space next to the store room’. It contains a couple of tables, some chairs, a TV and some MacDonald’s posters on the walls.
There must be a room exactly like this in every one of their restaurants all over the world, where young people of all nations gather to watch the same instructional video in dubbed into various languages. There are a surprising number of things to remember.
Ms Seco soon discovers that cleaning the dining area is preferable to actually serving customers, but stepping outside the restaurant into the fresh air is best of all, especially when she finds a twenty-cent piece. Finally, she stays outside the restaurant on a permanent basis, becoming a ‘happy quitter’.
This McMemoir is written in a fine, laconic style that aptly conveys the mutual indifference of employer and employee. I short of wished she had more to say, but I’m sure that the Corporation puts a lot of effort into ensuring that there really is nothing more to add to the phrase. ‘It was just a job.’
Others have been more successful in getting a job for which they were both overqualified and unsuitable for. The motive is usually some form of financial desperation, though not having an idea of what else to do with one’s life is also a spur. Actually, it has always been a quite common story. However, because of the economic downturn, and the ease of self publishing, there is the possibility that we are going to see the emergence of a new genre – the micro David Copperfield, in which a young person with aspirations and a sense of self worth, not to mention brains, spends a few months suffering monotony and numerous insults to their cultural sensibilities and then, does something else instead. Probably with computers.
A McMemoir with Fries by Linda Sacco at Smashwords 2010 details what must be close to a universal experience. Reading it felt familiar, even though I’ve never worked at MacDonald’s myself. Ms. Sacco was almost seventeen when she was interviewed, ‘outside in the wind’ and gets the job because she’s willing to work an unpopular shift. The ‘folio of achievements’ she brings along is not required.
Ms. Sacco evokes the utterly impersonal nature of the mega employer with a description of 'The Crew Room'. This is 'a tiny space next to the store room’. It contains a couple of tables, some chairs, a TV and some MacDonald’s posters on the walls.
There must be a room exactly like this in every one of their restaurants all over the world, where young people of all nations gather to watch the same instructional video in dubbed into various languages. There are a surprising number of things to remember.
Ms Seco soon discovers that cleaning the dining area is preferable to actually serving customers, but stepping outside the restaurant into the fresh air is best of all, especially when she finds a twenty-cent piece. Finally, she stays outside the restaurant on a permanent basis, becoming a ‘happy quitter’.
This McMemoir is written in a fine, laconic style that aptly conveys the mutual indifference of employer and employee. I short of wished she had more to say, but I’m sure that the Corporation puts a lot of effort into ensuring that there really is nothing more to add to the phrase. ‘It was just a job.’
Monday, 10 January 2011
Ho Americano
A Tale of America
By Jose Rodriguez
Published 2010 at Smashwords
This novel is made up of several linked stories that project a very bleak, and unsavoury vision of contemporary America. The backdrops are prairies and deserts, or the motel land on the margins of big cities, filled by "dealerships, strip malls and big box stores". Most of the characters don’t possess much, either materially or morally. Generally, they come from broken families. Sex, either real, or more often vicarious, is their chief preoccupation, followed a close second by alcohol.
The main character in the first story, a nameless young man, is remarkably detached from his surroundings and, although he is intensely self absorbed, he’s just as detached from his own emotions. An obsessive relationship with an older woman is strangely void of feeling, beyond an aching boredom when she is not around. She, as it transpires, is merely using him as an accomplice in crime – the disposal of her murdered husband’s body. When she slips out of his life and the city, the young man simply drifts away.
The fourth, and last, story, which draws the other characters together, takes up just over half of the book, and centres around the uninhibited exploits of Hilary, a good time girl who hasn’t had a very good time. Dumped by her boyfriend in Vegas, she falls in with Brenda and Cey, who work for a psychotic porn producer, Mr Kushner, aka Mr Obitus. As said before, this novel is a dark vision of America and it is noticeable that the monstrous Mr Kushner, (who also happens to be an attorney), is one of the few wealthy and successful characters in the book. Hilary, who was brought up in foster care, is slowly drawn into an underworld of violent sex work by Brenda and Cey, and she is finally threatened with a horrific death at the hands of Mr Kushner. The story becomes more like a conventional action thriller towards the close, but along the way there are some lurid episodes from which it is difficult to determine Mr Rodriguez’s attitude to Hilary’s "profession". At one point he seems to imply it’s no worse, and perhaps better than waiting on tables. Presumably, he’s aiming to describe how people from broken homes and in desperate straits are liable to value themselves.
The third story is a vignette of a jaded police detective, Nevergold, attending the scene of a murder out in the desert. He’ll only appear again at the very end of the novel. Nevergold, like Hilary, Brenda and Mr Kusher, struck me as somewhat stereotypical, though they are vivid stereotypes. Not too 2D, even though I sometimes felt I’d met them before on TV or in a movie.
The characters that felt most authentic for me were to be found in the second story. This part of the novel stands out from the rest for the gusto with which it is written, which is saying something, because Mr Rodriguez generally writes with gusto. A wedding photographer (he’s otherwise unnamed here, but he appears again as Cey) is becoming increasingly sexually obsessed by his partner’s fifteen year old daughter, Wanda. Meanwhile, Wanda’s father, Jimmie, who lives in a desert trailer where he is immersed in pornography and booze, hasn’t seen his daughter in two years. When he happens to encounter Wanda and her friends at a gas station, he is irresistibly drawn to the idea of committing incest with her. Through the haze of his addictions, he knows it will lead to his moral and mental destruction, but he is in the grip of what Poe terms the "Imp of the Perverse". He begins to stalk and groom her and things seem set to end in a very bad way indeed. In fact they do end in a very bad way, but there’s a twist at the end.
Mr Rodriguez writes with verve that is the equal (and sometimes is more than equal) to many mainstream published authors. He can be hit and miss with his metaphors, but again and again, he comes up with a striking turn of phrase. At the same time, apart from a generous scattering of typical typos, there is a tendency to use the incorrect tense. Also, Spanish idioms crop up, such as "no" to negate a verb. I’m not saying there is anything intrinsically wrong with Spanish idiom, except in English prose. These mistakes should have been ironed out, because they mar what is curious and readable fiction.
By Jose Rodriguez
Published 2010 at Smashwords
This novel is made up of several linked stories that project a very bleak, and unsavoury vision of contemporary America. The backdrops are prairies and deserts, or the motel land on the margins of big cities, filled by "dealerships, strip malls and big box stores". Most of the characters don’t possess much, either materially or morally. Generally, they come from broken families. Sex, either real, or more often vicarious, is their chief preoccupation, followed a close second by alcohol.
The main character in the first story, a nameless young man, is remarkably detached from his surroundings and, although he is intensely self absorbed, he’s just as detached from his own emotions. An obsessive relationship with an older woman is strangely void of feeling, beyond an aching boredom when she is not around. She, as it transpires, is merely using him as an accomplice in crime – the disposal of her murdered husband’s body. When she slips out of his life and the city, the young man simply drifts away.
The fourth, and last, story, which draws the other characters together, takes up just over half of the book, and centres around the uninhibited exploits of Hilary, a good time girl who hasn’t had a very good time. Dumped by her boyfriend in Vegas, she falls in with Brenda and Cey, who work for a psychotic porn producer, Mr Kushner, aka Mr Obitus. As said before, this novel is a dark vision of America and it is noticeable that the monstrous Mr Kushner, (who also happens to be an attorney), is one of the few wealthy and successful characters in the book. Hilary, who was brought up in foster care, is slowly drawn into an underworld of violent sex work by Brenda and Cey, and she is finally threatened with a horrific death at the hands of Mr Kushner. The story becomes more like a conventional action thriller towards the close, but along the way there are some lurid episodes from which it is difficult to determine Mr Rodriguez’s attitude to Hilary’s "profession". At one point he seems to imply it’s no worse, and perhaps better than waiting on tables. Presumably, he’s aiming to describe how people from broken homes and in desperate straits are liable to value themselves.
The third story is a vignette of a jaded police detective, Nevergold, attending the scene of a murder out in the desert. He’ll only appear again at the very end of the novel. Nevergold, like Hilary, Brenda and Mr Kusher, struck me as somewhat stereotypical, though they are vivid stereotypes. Not too 2D, even though I sometimes felt I’d met them before on TV or in a movie.
The characters that felt most authentic for me were to be found in the second story. This part of the novel stands out from the rest for the gusto with which it is written, which is saying something, because Mr Rodriguez generally writes with gusto. A wedding photographer (he’s otherwise unnamed here, but he appears again as Cey) is becoming increasingly sexually obsessed by his partner’s fifteen year old daughter, Wanda. Meanwhile, Wanda’s father, Jimmie, who lives in a desert trailer where he is immersed in pornography and booze, hasn’t seen his daughter in two years. When he happens to encounter Wanda and her friends at a gas station, he is irresistibly drawn to the idea of committing incest with her. Through the haze of his addictions, he knows it will lead to his moral and mental destruction, but he is in the grip of what Poe terms the "Imp of the Perverse". He begins to stalk and groom her and things seem set to end in a very bad way indeed. In fact they do end in a very bad way, but there’s a twist at the end.
Mr Rodriguez writes with verve that is the equal (and sometimes is more than equal) to many mainstream published authors. He can be hit and miss with his metaphors, but again and again, he comes up with a striking turn of phrase. At the same time, apart from a generous scattering of typical typos, there is a tendency to use the incorrect tense. Also, Spanish idioms crop up, such as "no" to negate a verb. I’m not saying there is anything intrinsically wrong with Spanish idiom, except in English prose. These mistakes should have been ironed out, because they mar what is curious and readable fiction.
Friday, 7 January 2011
Hero of Our Time
Trawling through online book review sites, I found myself staring at an apparently inexhaustible number of bare male torsos. These being the central feature of the book covers. The poses are different, but the torsos are pretty well identical, and since the head is always cut off, I can't help wondering whether it's the same guy. Furthermore, someone who didn't know better -- and that might be me -- could quite feasibly assume the cover to be an accurate depiction of the character in the story. A headless man as a lead character sounds interesting once, but fifty-thousand times? On the other hand, romantic fiction isn't written for me and anyway, these covers are in keeping with the spirit of the age. Isn't mass production and monotony a feature of our machine culture?
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